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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27034393">Don't Know What I Don't Know</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual'>NervousAsexual</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Half-Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Houndeye (Half-Life), Hurt No Comfort, I just really want a pet houndeye you guys, Oops, Whump, also the jumping puzzle referenced here is in opposing force not blue shift, but i didn't realize that until after it was half written, science gone wrong, which feels like cheating because Half Life is just Science Gone Wrong</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:55:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,317</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27034393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He shoulda gone to trade school. Instead, Barney's trapped in a dead-end job that has really gone nowhere fast.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960987</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Don't Know What I Don't Know</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Whumptober prompt #15--science gone wrong</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><div>
  <p>He shoulda gone to trade school.</p>
  <p>That's what he keeps telling himself. Shoulda got his welding certificate, made ten bucks an hour, had health and dental, found a nice union. But no, he didn't want to move all the time and he was afraid it might screw up his lungs, while Black Mesa was a government facility, it was safe and guaranteed income and how much work could it be, being a security guard in an underground facility in the middle of Arizona?</p>
  <p>Yeah. Right. Maybe he'd be coughing up his lungs in backwoods Montana or something, instead of dragging a mangled arm through an alien-infested maze of a research facility that is also under siege by the men in black.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Maybe he'd appreciate it more if any of the men in black looked like Will Smith in a suit, but if any of them are cute he can't tell over the sound of them trying to murder him. He didn't stop to check the ones he left at the bottom of the lift. If he never sees another dead body again it'll be too soon.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Now he's here on the tram loading dock, where hazardous materials or heavy machinery or whatever gets loaded up to go elsewhere. He can see the tram. It's right there, not ten feet from him. If he can get on the tram he could start it up and if nothing else go to a different level where ideally fewer bad things are happening.</p>
  <p>Trouble is, that ten foot gap goes directly over a seemingly bottomless pit.</p>
  <p>He crouches down by the edge of the docking bay and looks down at the big empty nothingness down below. His heart drops into his stomach. It's simple. All he has got to do is get from point A to point B. Operating word is "has," because his only other options are the door to the maintenance closet and the lift he just came up, and there's no way he's going back.</p>
  <p>There's a flatbed cart down at the lift end of the docking bay, abandoned by someone he hopes got out before things went to hell, and it's covered in scrap metal. He could pull it nearer to the tram, weigh one end down with the metal and stick the other end out to get a little bit closer, but even the idea of climbing out over that pit sets his stomach to writhing.</p>
  <p>He backs away from the edge and sits down hard on the cold concrete floor. Tears he can't cry are burning in his eyes--he can't remember the last time he had something to drink--he can barely walk straight, his right arm is all but useless and it's fortunate that he's a southpaw but there's things you need two hands for especially in the middle of an alien invasion/government conspiracy/apocalypse.<br/>He cradles his right arm in his lap--it used to ache and burn all over but his fingers have started to go numb and that can't be good--and hates himself for taking this stupid job. Just another dumb mistake like setting pigs loose at the pep rally or wearing all black the summer he detasselled corn but this time it'll kill him.</p>
  <p>How long has it been since he's seen anyone? Hours? Days? The clocks are all synced together and the one they're all relying on must be broken because the second hand just ticks back and forth from 9:26.04 to 9:27.05. It's like in nightmares where something bad is coming and he's frozen in place, except this time something bad has already arrived and he's frozen in time.. The only things he's really sure of are that something bad has happened, and that he can count on one hand the number of survivors he's seen.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>He's going to die down here.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>The pain and the hunger and the lack of sleep all hit him at once and he's crying, wailing, curling up on the concrete and sobbing like he hasn't done in years. This boring minimum-wage job where he was barely tolerated by most of his coworkers, this job that he should have left months ago, is going to kill him. Every friend he's made here is almost certainly already dead. Gordon could barely walk and chew gum at the same time; he would have died early on, which should be a blessing because at least he didn't suffer but he doesn't know that for sure, does he. And for all he knows this is happening everywhere. His family could already be dead. Everyone he grew up with or went to school with or knew in passing--gone.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>He thinks of the little alien-looking frog thing he'd been keeping in his locker before all this. Somehow that hits him harder than the idea of his friends and family dying. He thinks of poor Chumley in the empty locker room, waiting in the dark for the rest of his life, and absolutely bawls.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>He cries and cries and holds his broken, crumpled arm, and eventually he's too tired to cry anymore.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>He's half-asleep, half-considering never getting up again, when he hears the whine.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>It's not a human whine. It's not any animal he's ever heard before. It's definitely alien. He raises his head enough to look behind him.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>The maintenance room door is open. How? When? He's too tired to care. He lets his head fall back to the floor and comes face-to-face with a tire-sized compound eye.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>"Oh good," he mumbles. Why not. A houndeye can kill him as easily as falling off the docking bay. So he waits.</p>
  <p> </p>
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>And waits.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"Well?" he asks the houndeye. "We're burnin' daylight. Or moonlight. Or... Florescent light."</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>The houndeye blinks. It turns its eye-head thing at an angle and it looks so much like a dog it makes him cry all over again because he hasn't even thought about the fact that he'll never see another dog again because he's going to die here.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>The houndeye whines again and crouches its front legs so it can bump its weird eye-head thing against him.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"What do you want from me?" he asks it, and it makes that vibrating bark it makes before sending out a shock wave and he waits to die. It just stands there. He doesn't die. "I can't help you. I can't even help myself. So just do what you gotta do and move along."</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>Instead the houndeye kicks its back leg forward and sits down on its weird tail-butt thing.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"You're cute but I'm not really in the market for a new pet. I'm trying to curl up in the dirt and let the earth reclaim me."</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>It barks.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"Are you confused or something? Because I can't help you. I don't know what's happening or why or what to do. I..." His voice breaks at the weirdest time. "I just work here."</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>All this and he'll never know what was happening, not that he'd be smart enough to understand it. He looks up at the houndeye and it looks back.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"I'm, uh, I'm kinda scared," he admits.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>It whines in a way that sounds almost sympathetic.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"You're a good listener, buddy. But you'd probably better go find your pack thing."</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>The houndeye stands up and starts to turn away. His throat hurts with tears.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>And then the houndeye flops down directly beside him, so close it brushes his armor, and his heart about stops.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"What... are you..."</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>It makes weird alien snoring noises.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"Are you... sleeping?"</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>It just keeps snoring.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>"I don't know what to do. I don't know anything."</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>He doesn't. All of this is wrong.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>He should've gone to trade school but it's too late to change anything now. Nothing he can do but curl up on the concrete, spooning with a houndeye until he finally falls asleep.</p>
  </div>
</div>
  </div></div>
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